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No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel

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Imagine being a black man in the U.S. and traveling to a place and time when all blacks were second-class citizens (e.g. 1950) or slaves (e.g. 1860) and had to carry papers to prove otherwise, or where they were likely to be lynched for using the wrong public toilet or being in the wrong neighborhood. Similar issues exist for other peoples too — a non-Chinese of any sort found in China during the Boxer Rebellion would be beaten to death in short order. Likewise, traveling to Nazi Germany (or any Nazi-occupied area, for that matter) and loudly proclaiming socialist sympathies or your Jewish ancestry is an excellent way to commit suicide.note  If they go to these dangerous time periods anyway, expect repercussions. Women in many eras and places will have similar issues, although to a lesser degree — the culture shock of a less modern and/or liberal society may be a plot point.


How realistic (at least, to the extent that a story about time travel can be rooted in realism) this trope is varied. There is no use pretending that racism did not exist, but the levels and expressions thereof have varied wildly throughout history — it is not cleanly divided between the dangerous Past and the accepting Present. It's also paranoid (in most cases) to assume that a "modern" person's very existence will trigger violence or repression. Most civilized societies will tolerate just about anyone as long as they don't "cause any trouble" — although, granted, "trouble" will be defined very broadly if a society really is that reactionary.

Of course, a discriminated-against character who is superpowered, a highly-trained soldier or vigilante, or just plain deranged can easily punch and/or slaughter their way through a past era following any number of Mugging the Monster moments. In this way, such a character can earn respect — or at least fear, though that might trigger even worse persecution if the past era manages to muster a sufficient force against them.


Note that one should be careful not to generalize, as bigotry was never universal even in eras when it was at its height. Hillsdale College was a 'liberal-arts school' (i.e. university) in the "Great Lakes" area USA State of Michigan that admitted women, Jews, atheists, and Africans as students before the American Civil War — a big deal given that the USA did not ban slavery until the very last months of the Civil War.note  Bigotry becomes socially unacceptable at various times as well, only to reappear later because of shifting power dynamics. In Britain in the late 19th Century for example racism was considered unacceptable because it was associated with the United States (whom they were still sore about losing to: indeed one of the major reasons Britain outlawed the slave trade was to annoy the Americans). Also, remember that people we would now consider white weren't always: go back to 1920 and simply having a non-English name could cause you a lot of trouble. Go back to 1600 and you're more likely to be ragged on about your religion than your race: modern racism as we think of it was in it's infancy at this time. Before 1600, time travel would actually be pretty equal-opportunity: for all cis-men anyhow.

Frequently subverted for laughs with a Discriminate and Switch — e.g., nobody cares that you're a black woman, but wearing trousers?!?

Compare Black Vikings, Politically Correct History. Also Eternal Sexual Freedom. Not really related to Time Travelling Lesbians, which is about the setting as a world in which time travel can exist making being queer more acceptable — this can definitely still apply in those stories.


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    Audio Plays 
  • Big Finish Doctor Who: Inverted with companion Oliver Harper, who is worried about time travel due to being a gay man from the 1960s, when homosexuality was illegal. Steven Taylor, from hundreds of years in the future, hadn't even thought about this and finds the idea of people discriminating against someone for their sexual orientation faintly surreal.
  • Third Doctor Radio Dramas: The Ghosts of N-Space has the Doctor dress his companion Sarah Jane in boys' clothing during a visit to medieval times, causing her to be repeatedly mistaken for "his catamite".

    Comic Books 
  • One arc of Justice Society of America saw some of the team sent into the 1950s to the time of the original Justice Society. The black Mr. Terrific had some unpleasant experiences in the pre-Civil Rights era, like being forced to change train cars, but took it rather stoically. And then, just to rub it in, he fights a Ku Klux Klan chapter who manages to get a noose around his throat.
  • When the Runaways have an adventure in 1905 New York City, Xavin — a Skrull (shapeshifting alien) whose default human form is a teenage black lesbian — sticks to an adult white male form for most of the adventure. Also, Nico encounters some racism and Karolina is nearly raped when she goes sight-seeing since a lone young woman must be "asking for it" (the would-be rapist got an energy blast for his troubles). Interestingly, Victor doesn't face any troubles despite being a Hispanic falling in love with a white girl.
  • One of the Justice League one-shots had a story where Steel and Wonder Woman are sent back in time to the year 1574. In order to hide their true identities, Wonder Woman poses as a pirate, while Steel is forced to pose as an African slave.
  • Inversion in the Winter Soldier: Winter Kills one-shot. Bucky Barnes (who is from the 1940s) uses the term "pansy" as an offhanded insult, and Kate Bishop of the Young Avengers calls him out for being homophobic. He clarifies that he meant it as an insult for wimpy men, not gays.

    Fan Works 
  • In Memento Vivere, a Final Fantasy X fanfiction, Rikku faces full on Al Bhed discrimination in the past.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Timeline: In the movie adaption of Michael Crichton's novel, one of the time travelers gets killed by 14th century Englishmen (who are at war with France), due to his French accent. This is a bit odd, considering that British royalty actually spoke a French dialect at the time in Real Life, and French accents change over time, so a modern-day Frenchman wouldn't necessarily sound anything like a 14th Century Frenchman. This didn't occur in the original novel, which specifically showed that Middle French isn't anything much like Modern French, so nobody is able to understand them until they learn it.
  • Men in Black 3: Agent J is warned before he goes back in time that the 1960s, to paraphrase, "weren't the best time for... you guys". Minutes after arriving in 1960s New York City, the time-pressed J steals a (rather nice) car to head off the villain's plot, after being thrown the keys when mistaken for a valet. Predictably, two white cops stop him along the way to his destination, leading to humorous results. Possibly a reference to his quip in the second film about replacing a black inflatable driver for a white one due to being constantly pulled over.
    J: Just because you see a black man driving a nice car does not mean it's stolen! Well, this one is...
  • Averted in Black Knight. Martin Lawrence's character Jamal ends up in Medieval England and isn't treated any different from a white man, although he gets annoyed at frequently being called "Moor". In fact, the big problem people have with him is his attitude. Of course, he starts being treated much better after he accidentally names himself as the messenger of the Duke of Normandy. Any of his oddities are attributed to him being a "Norman". Then again, it was All Just a Dream — or was it?. This is one of those Reality Is Unrealistic cases. While black Africans were discriminated against in most European countries at that time, and more as time moved on, the idea that it'd have more to do with his place of origin and not specifically his skin color is pretty valid.
  • Hot Tub Time Machine 2 when the guys are going to go back to the 1770s to "Make America Happen" Jacob tells Nick (who is black) "you're not going to be too super welcome there, but we should totally go!"

  • Octavia Butler covers the perils of time traveling while black in the 1979 novel Kindred - the black protagonist goes to 19th-century Maryland to meet her ancestors, one of whom is a white slave owner. Drama ensues.
  • In an Animorphs story involving time travel, the group runs into this problem — they wind up at Princeton University, circa 1934, in an alternate timeline with a lot of differences from the real one — where someone calls Cassie something she would REALLY rather not be called. She puts him in his place to the tune of a 900-pound Polar Bear.
  • In Johnny and the Bomb, Yo-less travels back a mere forty years or so, to World War II era, and has to deal with people calling him "Sambo".
  • Inverted in Andre Norton's The Time Traders series, where both the titular organization's agents and their Soviet counterparts are sent on undercover missions in different areas and eras of history (and their cover identities composed) specifically on the basis of their racial makeup. Not only is conspicuous behavior avoided for fear of the usual Butterfly of Doom, but because word of it in history books would alert the enemy to your position in time.
  • The book A Wish After Midnight sends a girl back to the Civil War.
  • Pretty much the entire point of Harry Harrison's A Rebel in Time. White supremacist goes back in time to help the South win the Civil War, and a black federal agent decides it will be a snap to follow the killer back to antebellum deep south. When the slave owners of the era see his high-quality clothes and hear his 20th century New York college educated accent, things proceed pretty much as you'd expect under the circumstances.
  • In Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, only one of the three time-travelers sent to change the result of Columbus' first encounter with native Americans is the appropriate race for the culture that they will be dealing with (and none of them are white). In the end, one character, a black woman, has to overcome a lot of prejudice to win over the natives, but she eventually succeeds while another, a middle-eastern man sent to sabotage one of Columbus's ships, actually uses his race to the mission's advantage, revealing himself and allowing his Heroic Sacrifice to unite the crew against the "Muslim enemy". The Muslim is explicitly stated as being white. It is only when he speaks Arabic and declares himself a Turk that his race becomes an issue... even the Mayan going back to visit the Mayans is a foot taller than the Mayans of that time, making him stand out. The "foot taller" part helps, as his goal is to convince the natives that he's a messenger of the gods.
  • Tunnels of Treachery plays with this — the two previous books both involved white kids going back in time using the Moose Jaw tunnels and when their Chinese-Canadian friends do so, they get a very different reception.
  • In Time Scout, women cannot be scouts. Period. When Margo insists, she ends up tortured and gang-raped by downtime Catholics and is almost burned at the stake. They can be guides. Guiding and scouting are wildly different professions; guiding is a fairly safe if high-competence profession strictly limited to well-explored times and places where a woman can learn to blend in. Scouting is an extreme-risk profession where one is operating without a net and guides all but guaranteed to die horribly. The race issue is never brought up.
  • Played with in The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman. Sophie — who is white in 1960 — goes back in time to 1860 and is instantly assumed to be a slave thanks to her tan and frizzy hair.
  • It is mentioned in the first Time Wars novel that while the Temporal Corps recruits women, they are often limited to support roles in missions as not many time periods have frontline female fighters.
  • Played completely straight in Jon Birmingham's Axis of Time trilogy, where a Multinational Taskforce from the 21st century is transported by a Negative Space Wedgie to 1942. A good number of crewmembers from the "uptimer" ships are either black or Asian. In fact, the "temps" are incredulous to find out that the "uptimers" put a black woman in command of a warship. One of the main characters is a black Marine, who jibes as a "temp" named Dan Black about racism. Dan shuts him down by pointing out that in his father's household, anyone who used the N-word would be sorry. The liberal views of the 21st-century clash hard with the "normal" views of 1940s America. To this end, Admiral Kolhammer gets FDR to declare an area in California as a Special Administrative Zone, where the laws and customs of the 21st century are the norm (and people can be sued for violating those laws, even if the act happens outside the Zone). J Edgar Hoover is determined to shut down the Zone, claiming that it's amoral. In response, Kolhammer tries to expose Hoover as a closet gay.
  • Played straight with women in Scott Meyer's Off to Be the Wizard. It's fairly easy for men who discover the file and travel back in time to pretend to be wizards/sorcerers/fakirs/shamans/etc. in the past. However, any woman who tries to do the same usually runs straight into the Burn the Witch! attitude of most of history. Thus, most women end up traveling to the 4th century BC to the city of Atlantis, a Lady Land built in the Mediterranean as a safe haven for sorceresses. Averted with wizards named Tyler (black) and Eddie (Asian). They choose to live in 12th century England. When asked, Tyler replies that he claims to be a Moor. The locals then assume that he has either converted to Christianity or is powerful enough not to care. Eddie pretends to be a sorcerer from the Far East named Wing Po, despite his heavy Joisey accent. Either way, being a powerful wizard means that the locals won't dare touch them or complain about their non-whiteness. Most male time travelers tend to go to a place and time that fits with their ethnicity and cultural heritage. The second novel also reveals that not every native Mediterranean is okay with women being in charge.
  • Doctor Who Missing Adventures: In The Plotters, the Doctor attempts to avoid trouble by dressing his female companion Vicki as a boy (as he had previously done in the TV story "The Crusade"), only to find this has the opposite of the intended effect when she attracts the attention of a lecherous old gay king who sets about trying to woo her.
  • In Human Nature, the Doctor's companion Bernice Summerfield is supposed to be keeping a low profile during an extended sojourn in the 1910s. She ditches her skirts about twenty minutes into the adventure in favour of her regular trousers. This gets her into a lot of trouble.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Inverted in The 4400, Richard Tyler has been brought forward from The Korean War, where he was almost killed for being attracted to a white woman. It takes him a few episodes to get used to the relative lack of racism.
  • Subverted in a Chappelle's Show sketch, where "Playa Haters" go back in time and shoot a Southern plantation owner.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The early Hartnell series sometimes avoided this by having the female characters dress as men. This happens in "The Crusade" and "The Smugglers". "The Massacre", meanwhile, has no female companion until the very end (which is set in the present day).
    • "The Time Warrior" revolves in part around Sarah Jane, a 1970s-'80s feminist, getting stuck in the Dark Ages and the trouble this causes for her. She is treated horribly, both the men and the aliens in this time period are ridiculously misogynistic, and even clever and likable contemporary woman scoff at the idea of not being basically slaves.
    • "Tooth and Claw": Rose gets called out by Queen Victoria herself and several other characters who repeatedly describe her as being naked, due to the short overalls and tights she wears through the episode.
    • Martha Jones (who is black) tends to get away with this for the most part, though her trips are rarely to the distant past and when they are, the issue will be addressed.
      • "The Shakespeare Code" has Martha worried about being sold as a slave, but the Doctor assures her this wasn't actually an issue. In reality, there actually were some black people in England, none of whom were slaves, and the dialogue was actually meant to teach kids that England wasn't entirely white in the 17th century.
      • "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" (set in 1913) has Martha's race subtly addressed as nobody believes a woman, let alone a poor minority woman, is capable of being a doctor.
    • Donna, while treated fairly well, still complains when the Doctor's cover story for her in "The Unicorn and the Wasp" is that she's the "plucky young woman who helps me out" on account of there being no policewomen in 1920s Britain.
    • Bill, being a lesbian and of African descent, has a few things to worry about when they visit the past.
      • In "Thin Ice", upon finding she's in 1814, she is worried about how she'll be treated on account of being black. The Doctor sadly acknowledges that slavery is still a reality in this time period, but Bill is surprised by the fact that the non-white population of London in the Regency is higher than she was expecting, and most of the characters don't bat an eye at her. The one character who does is Lord Sutcliffe, who is a Politically Incorrect Villain, and promptly gets decked by the Doctor for it. A slight Research Fail by the authors as, while slavery did exist at this time, Lord Mansfield's judgment established that slavery was incompatible with English Common Law and effectively had not existed in England since the Romans left.
      • When encountering Victorian soldiers on Mars, their commander laughs at the idea of Bill being a policewoman since women couldn't be cops at that time (but, interestingly, doesn't seem to notice her skin colour).
      • Averted when visiting Scotland during Ancient Roman times, as Bill's admittance to being a lesbian is taken in stride by the Roman soldiers (the Ancient Roman concept of sexuality could be complicated, and people often had relationships with both sexes — the taboo was being, if one was gay, the receiver rather than the giver; one of the soldiers is gay, and the rest just think he's missing out on half the fun he could be having), and no one bats an eye at her skin colour (the gay soldier is also black), which is entirely reasonable — the Empire ruled much of North Africa by this point, and one of the later Emperors, Septimius Severus, was mixed-race, if not black (no one's entirely sure).
    • It's treated very seriously in "Rosa", an episode whose entire subject is racism (the Doctor and friends end up in 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, where a time-travelling white supremacist from the far future is trying to prevent the Montgomery Bus Boycott from happening). At the very start of the episode, the Doctor's black companion Ryan gets hit, and nearly worse, just for trying to give a white woman a glove that she dropped, and racism continues to be a major hazard and obstruction throughout.
    • Also treated seriously in "The Witchfinders", which sees a now-female Doctor travel to England in the early 1600s, and everyone ignores her opinions and condescends down to her. Her psychic paper ID even fails to convince King James that she is of a position of authority. Worse, her usual habit of waving a sonic screwdriver around and spouting technobabble around a posse of extremely paranoid witch hunters nearly sees her getting dunked.
    • "Spyfall": The Doctor leaves the Master (now played by British Indian Sacha Dhawan) stranded with angry Nazis and no TARDIS. He mentions having to live the most infuriating 77 years on The Slow Path, the implication being that he's had to deal with intense racism for the first regeneration of his life.
    • In The Sarah Jane Adventures episode "The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith", this gets played with when Rani goes back to the 1950s looking for Sarah Jane — Rani assumes she's getting looks because of racism, but later realizes people are staring at her because of her outfit, and the only reason she's getting away with it is because she isn't white.
      Rani: Yes, I get it, ethnic person in the '50s!
    • In Torchwood, Jack Harkness and Toshiko Sato are stuck in 1940s Cardiff, and Tosh expresses some very real concerns about being Japanese and in WWII. Fortunately, the attack on Pearl Harbor (and the British Asian colonies) is still several months in the future.
  • Legends of Tomorrow:
    • In Season 2, the Legends end up in the middle of the American Civil War, and Jax and Amaya end up witnessing the plight of the slaves. Their non-submissive attitudes immediately land them in hot water with the white plantation owner.
  • Amanda's black roommate in Lost in Austen points out that she can't go through the door because she's black.
  • This trope was the center of an early Quantum Leap episode, where Sam ends up in the body of a black man, in the past. Sam nearly gets himself into hot water immediately by trying to sit down in a café and order a meal.
  • The premise of one Saturday Night Live sketch was to bring a rather camp 17th century Belgian nobleman and his equally camp black (free) manservant together with KKK membernote  John Belushi in the Deep South.
  • A third season episode of seaQuest DSV, the titular sub ends up in the '60s during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Commander Jonathan Ford (a black man) takes a team to the surface. They "borrow" a car and take it to their destination on the shore. On the way, they pass by a car full of young men. They arrive at the beach only to see the other car pull up behind them and the guys getting out with baseball bats. Ford suddenly notices a "No blacks allowed" sign and remembers his history. Plus, he was in the same car as a white woman, which only pissed off the '60s guys more. Luckily, all of the team members are military-trained, so a bunch of punks with baseball bats is not a threat.
  • Averted but discussed in the Stargate SG-1 episode "1969". The hippie calls Teal'c "brother" and insists that he ride up front with him. The hippie is making a point of showing that he's not racist, unlike a lot of his contemporaries. The whole thing is Played for Laughs, as Teal'c is not from Earth and has no idea why he's being singled out.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Averted in the episode "Time's Arrow", where the android Data is sent back in time to late-1800s San Francisco. His Starfleet uniform gets more attention than his albino-pale skin and yellow eyes, and he's able to pass without trouble by telling everyone he is from France. (It helps that, having a perfect memory, he can speak perfect French.)
    • Also averted without explanation in the case of Geordi (a black man), who only has to hide his anachronistic VISOR, and Guinan, a black-looking Human Alien who lives in that time and lives a high-class life.
  • Cited on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as a reason Sisko doesn't want to participate in a holodeck program set in 1962 Las Vegas — even if the program doesn't recreate racial discrimination, as that just makes it an unjustified romanticization of a troubled period.note 
  • Done with space travel rather than time travel on The Tomorrow People (1973), when the characters visit a planet of Human Aliens. As there are no dark-skinned people on that world (or at least that part of it), a black character from Earth isn't able to accompany her companions in public.
  • This problem is the main reason why the UK comedy series Timewasters exists, which has a group of bumbling, working-class, Afro-British lads (and one ladette) accidentally time-travel from modern London to the 1920s and 1950s, where they manage to muddle through thanks to being a pretty talented Jazz band (and one of the guys quickly becoming the boytoy of a rich, middle-aged, white lady), which had been struggling in the present since the music style is out of fashion.

    Print Media 
  • Contact magazine, based on the 3-2-1 Contact TV show, had a recurring segment involving two time-traveling teenagers. One installment had the (presumably white) American kids get in trouble when they ended up in Japan during World War II. In Hiroshima just before the bomb was dropped, no less.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In the time-travel RPG Continuum, one of the flavor text stories deals with Cynthia, a white newbie spanner, discussing history's nastier periods with Evana, a more experienced African-American:
    "1886. I couldn't handle going any farther Down then. I was young. Playing the slave was not something Evana was ever going to do."

    Video Games 
  • World of Warcraft:
    • A Fantastic Racism variation of this trope: player races that were not a part of the Alliance prior to the Third War are given a Race Lift while running certain instances in the Caverns of Time so that they avoid attracting unwanted attention. Of course, many of World of Warcraft PC races weren't even known to exist until sometime during or after the Third War, including the Worgen, Tauren, Night Elves, and Pandaren — who weren't even discovered by the larger world until the aftermath of the Third War, and remain an obscure and little-known race by the start of Mists of Pandaria — so some of it is less unwanted attention in the form of overt racism and more in the form of "What the hell are you, and why are you here?"
    • A similar disguise is used in Mists of Pandaria to explain each faction taking part in Scenarios featuring the other faction's leaders. Well, sort of; the in-character explanation is that the characters are listening to/participating in a sort of historical record.

    Western Animation 
  • In one episode of X-Men, a few alternate-universe versions of the X-Men travel back to the '50s to save the younger Professor Xavier from a time-traveling assassin. They all talk at a cafe, and the owner gets pissy about the fact that Storm and Wolverine (an African woman and a white man, respectively) are a couple. Naturally, this makes Wolverine completely flip out.
    Chris Sims: At the same time, shouldn't this dude have been worried when these people walked in and two of them were dressed like characters from a Fallout game and one of them was CARRYING A GIGANTIC GUN? I will say, though, that I do like the idea of a dude being so racist that the laser shotgun isn't as big a problem as interracial hand-holding.
Not surprising given that the X-Men are one big metaphor for racism and prejudice. Though Storm is more amused than offended — after facing persecution her whole life for being a mutant, she remarks that plain old-fashioned racism is almost quaint. Amusingly also something of an inversion, as this also gets them mistaken for beatniks, resulting in a patron with beatnik sympathies siding with them in the ensuing brawl.
  • Averted in the Transformers: Rescue Bots season 1 finale "It's a Bot Time"/"Bot to the Future". No one says anything at all about Frankie's race or gender. This is justified since Rescue Bots is a children's show and the scientists that meet her have bigger things to think about. However, many of the town's top scientists of that era also seem to be non-white, so it seems that Griffin Rock was just as far ahead socially from the rest of the country as it was technologically.
  • In the Justice League episode "Legends", several leaguers are sent to an alternate Earth based on The Golden Age of Comic Books and team up with expies of The Justice Society of America. On most accounts, they are actually Fair For Their Day, but include uncomfortable moments like Black Canary's expy suggests Hawkgirl Stay in the Kitchen and Jay Gerrick's praises African American Green Lantern Jon Stuart by calling him a credit to his race.

    Real Life 
  • Not actually time travel, but a similar idea: for those who want to research their family history, they'll probably run into trouble after a few generations if they aren't of English descent. Why? Because most other countries (particularly in Southern and Eastern Europe) didn't keep detailed records of births and deaths until the late nineteenth century, and even today, that's only a handful of generations ago (as in the number of generations can be counted on one hand). On the other hand, Eastern countries did keep records for a long time, but if you don't live in an Asian country yourself, you probably can't read them. Thus, in the English-speaking world, if you aren't of WASP descent on at least one branch of your family, you're out of luck if you want to trace your ancestry back far.
    • Also happens within the U.S. with African-Americans, who usually can't trace ancestry before the 1860s, since detailed records of black people before then are hard to find.
  • Would not be, contra the Louis C.K. quote, an exclusively white thing, since ethnic mobility was quite low for most of history. Try being anything other than Japanese in Edo Japan, for instance.

Alternative Title(s): Black People Cannot Time Travel


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